In the technical sector of interior furnishing, supporting structures are required which are suitable for forming tables, desks and the like and can be easily assembled, ensuring the necessary rigidity of the assembled components, and which allow several support surfaces to be provided in accordance with the various requirements and which can also be connected together so as to form multiple working units suitable for use by several persons.
In addition to this, it is also required that such structures should be easy to assemble and disassemble and be able to be combined so as to form tables of different dimensions and geometrical configurations without having to vary the elements which make up the supporting structure
It is also known that the technical problems associated with these functional requirements have already been considered and solved by three main types of supporting structures.
Conventional solution, where the supporting structures may be jointly used by several accessory elements, as, for example, in the case of adjacent tables, the surfaces are supported by common uprights. In this case, however, extension of the structure is performed only along one axis, i.e. the horizontal one, of the theoretical set of three reference axes defining the volume of the area to be furnished
In a combined system, the structures are still jointly used by several working surfaces and, if necessary, by screens separating the actual work stations. In this case the structure may be expanded along all three axes of the aforementioned set of three axes defining the volume to be furnished and allows a large amount of space to be saved compared to the conventional solution. However, it has the drawback that, in order to vary the arrangement of part of the work stations, it is necessary to disassemble the structure by performing operations which, although they are simple, take time and require disassembly of the entire structure which must be then re-assembled with additional parts.
In an add-on system, the latter which is composed of structures for supporting the various components which are totally independent. The multiple configuration is obtained in this case by simply arranging the tables next to one another in the two horizontal directions of the aforementioned set of three reference axes. In this case also, it is possible to obtain an expansion in the vertical direction for screens, accessories and the like, which, however, are joined together without the possibility of relative movement.
All the systems described above are, however, independent of one another and it is not possible to change from one to the other, without modifying entirely the elements which make up the basic structure.